This present invention relates to apparatus to continuously separate and/or partially enrich a desired component in a mixture of feed gases and, specifically to electromechanical gas separator apparatus for this purpose.
The separation of a gas mixture to partially or fully recover a gaseous component by adsorption, absorption, diffusion and low temperature distillation is well known. Gaseous mixture composed of components having markedly different chemical and physical properties may be readily separated by such processes. When such chemical and physical properties of the gas components are very similar, gas separation by such well known methods becomes very difficult or impossible. It is the characteristic of difficult separation processes to require a series of cascaded separation stages, for the efficiency of single separation stages is quite small. Where processing equipment for gas separation requires precision machining and casting or expensive materials of construction, huge capital outlays are required to construct such plants. Also, large power requirements are necessary when the individual separation stages are operated in an inefficient manner. Therefor until now, difficult gas separation plants have been economically prohibitive for general industrial useage.